Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.
A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
Just as ecstasy purifies you of the particular and the contingent, leaving nothing except light and darkness, so insomnia kills off the multiplicity and diversity of the world, leaving you prey to your private obsessions.
A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime.
A civilization begins to decline the moment Life becomes its sole obsession.
Trees are massacred, houses go up — faces, faces everywhere. Man is spreading. Man is the cancer of the earth.